Cheerleaders on professional sports teams take the elements of a high school squad and amp them up on steroids. There’s no real cheering anymore, no chanting of go team slogans accompanied by a gymnastic routine and human pyramids. The squads are extremely sexualized, wearing outfits Elite Mens Chuck Bednarik jersey that make some of them look more like pole dancers than athletes, and not doing much more at the games than flipping their long hair around and shaking their behinds. There’s something a Elite Mens Chuck Bednarik jersey little anachronistic about cheerleading squads, anyway the stadium is way too loud to hear anyone lead a cheer, and the function of the cheerleaders (at games, anyway) seems mainly to serve as a racy cutaway for networks trying to keep the viewers Elite Kids Brad Smith jersey (well, the heterosexual male viewers, anyway) from changing the channel.

Then there’s the message the modern day cheerleading performances send to modern day girls and young women. With so many females participating in competitive sports, what kind of statement does it make to show women serving the male team this way, as if the job of men is to do the Elite Youth Brandon Graham jersey real work, and the job of women is to cheer them on?Read more from blogger Susan Milligan.]

Still, the grievances of the Buffalo Jills, the cheerleading squad attached to the Buffalo Bills, are legitimate and they are long overdue for some Elite Kids Brad Smith jersey kind of justice.

Several members of the Jills have filed suit, complaining that they are not even paid minimum wage. The women are not Authenitc Youth Darren Sproles jersey paid for games or practices, and are required to make public appearances almost Elite Chuck Bednarik jersey all unpaid 25 30 times a year. They must pay for their own uniforms at a cost of about $650. Their personal lives are controlled to an absurd and patronizing extent, from what they write on Facebook Elite Youth Brandon Graham Elite Kids Brad Smith jersey jersey to what color nail polish they wear. Further, the lawsuit contends the women were subject to “demeaning and degrading treatment.” That included being forced to appear at a golf tournament in bikinis and be “auctioned off like prizes” to the (male) participants. They have been groped, subject to inappropriate sexual comments, and, perhaps most offensive, forced to take a “jiggle test” to determine if Authenitc Youth Chuck Bednarik jersey too much of their bodies shook during the jumping they do on the sidelines.

No, the women don’t have to be cheerleaders. They can choose professions that pay more and in which they are treated with more respect. But that still does not make it acceptable to treat these women this way. Perhaps the cheerleaders enjoy the attention of being Elite Kids Byron Maxwell jersey a Jill; perhaps they are aspiring dancers or Elite Kids Brad Smith jersey TV personalities and know that being a Buffalo Jill is something useful to put on an entertainment resume. But that doesn’t make it OK to demean and exploit the members of the squad, anymore than it’s OK to force college graduates to work unpaid “internships,” simply because you can find someone else who will do it Elite Darren Sproles jersey willingly. Labor and wage laws are there for Chuck Bednarik jersey a reason, and that’s to prevent employers from abusing workers who, for whatever reason, really want a particular job.

The Jills have suspended operations since the lawsuit, perhaps to intimidate the cheerleaders or create a pretext for replacing them. That’s no different from other companies that have threatened plant closures or other retaliation to force workers into line. Ideally, we’d abandon this backward idea of professional team cheerleaders (the exception being the genuine athletes and gymnasts, female and male, who now so impressively perform at college games). The second best thing would be for these women to unionize, league wide, and demand not only payment for practices and games, but workplace standards that don’t make sexual harassment a part of the job. The NFL players have a union, so why not the cheerleaders?

Eleanor Roosevelt may not have been the image of an NFL cheerleader, and may not even have endorsed their existence. But the cheerleading squads can take Authenitc Youth Brad Smith jersey a powerful lesson from her: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Several of the Jills are making that point right now. Their colleagues elsewhere in the league should follow.